“I can't get no satisfaction…” croaked Mick Jagger with his unmistakable thick lipped-pout.

He was venting a deep seated human yearning for more...but more of what?

Meaning, significance, purpose, intimacy? All of the above, and more? 

I’m full of admiration for Olympian athletes like Marchand, Keely, Peaty, Lyles and Alfred who demonstrate such hunger and determination to better themselves, overcome obstacles and become champions.

But then what? New sights, targets, aims and goals are required, because there’s always more.

In contrast to this, Rev Joe Barnard’s message to revellers at the recent Belladrum Tartan Heart Festival near Inverness suggests that today many of us are too easily satisfied and our sights set too low. 

Sometimes it’s disappointment and being let down by others that tempers expectation and short-circuits hoping and dreaming. 

Some of us are happy to live our lives from holiday to holiday, event to event, weekend to weekend, and during in-between times, to muddle on.

I’m returned from a long escape to Hilton: not a hotel, but a small fishing village on Scotland’s Moray coast. The weather was more like spring than summer, but it gave ample opportunity for recreation and renewal. 

Due to a particularly demanding year I’d (kind of) crawled on hands and knees towards this longed-for ‘time out’.

With mobile and internet range patchy, I could simply ‘BE’ and find myself afresh ‘IN CHRIST’, in intimate relationship with The Almighty.

Weekly Sabbath Rest and annual time out are great for arresting the scurry, worry and flurry which all too easily characterise our fast-paced lives, and for re-setting the ‘high bar’ of Christian service. 

Jesus’ invitation resonated long and strong in my heart, calling me (through Him and all he’s achieved for me in His life, death and resurrection) to ‘Rest in Relationship with Father-God’. But not to settle for my meagre measure of Christ-like maturity or small achievements in Christ’s service.

Thus, I return chilled and almost ‘horizontal’, but with a ‘healthy dissatisfaction’ with the way things are, and a deep desire to prove the loving and saving love of Christ in my community and God’s world. 

U2’s Bono expresses such healthy yearning for ‘something more’ in, “I still haven’t found what I’m looking for…”. Will you join me in settling for nothing less than ‘God’s Best’ as our ultimate aim, ‘heaven here on earth’ (God’s will on earth as in heaven). 

Here’s how St Paul put it: “I’m not saying that I have this all together, that I have it made. But I am well on my way, reaching out for Christ, who has so wondrously reached out for me.

"Friends, don’t get me wrong: By no means do I count myself an expert in all of this, but I’ve got my eye on the goal, where God is beckoning us onward to Jesus. I’m off and running, and I’m not turning back.” (MSG)